There was a sickly babe with the mother, and three other children, one a cripple.  The father, who had been out of work until he had been, as he afterwards confessed to Maxwell, several times on the edge of suicide, sat with the baby in his arms during the journey, and when Maxwell started back to Raymond, after seeing the family settled, the man held his hand at parting, and choked with his utterance, and finally broke down, to Maxwell’s great confusion.  The mother, a wearied, worn-out woman who had lost three children the year before from a fever scourge in the Rectangle, sat by the car window all the way and drank in the delights of sea and sky and field.  It all seemed a miracle to her.  And Maxwell, coming back into Raymond at the end of that week, feeling the scorching, sickening heat all the more because of his little taste of the ocean breezes, thanked God for the joy he had witnessed, and entered upon his discipleship with a humble heart, knowing for almost the first time in his life this special kind of sacrifice.  For never before had he denied himself his regular summer trip away from the heat of Raymond, whether he felt in any great need of rest or not.

“It is a fact,” he said in reply to several inquiries on the part of his church, “I do not feel in need of a vacation this year.  I am very well and prefer to stay here.”  It was with a feeling of relief that he succeeded in concealing from every one but his wife what he had done with this other family.  He felt the need of doing anything of that sort without display or approval from others.

So the summer came on, and Maxwell grew into a large knowledge of his Lord.  The First Church was still swayed by the power of the Spirit.  Maxwell marveled at the continuance of His stay.  He knew very well that from the beginning nothing but the Spirit’s presence had kept the church from being torn asunder by the remarkable testing it had received of its discipleship.  Even now there were many of the members among those who had not taken the pledge, who regarded the whole movement as Mrs. Winslow did, in the nature of a fanatical interpretation of Christian duty, and looked for the return of the old normal condition.  Meanwhile the whole body of disciples was under the influence of the Spirit, and the pastor went his way that summer, doing his parish work in great joy, keeping up his meetings with the railroad men as he had promised Alexander Powers, and daily growing into a better knowledge of the Master.

Early one afternoon in August, after a day of refreshing coolness following a long period of heat, Jasper Chase walked to his window in the apartment house on the avenue and looked out.

On his desk lay a pile of manuscript.  Since that evening when he had spoken to Rachel Winslow he had not met her.  His singularly sensitive nature—­sensitive to the point of extreme irritability when he was thwarted—­served to thrust him into an isolation that was intensified by his habits as an author.